Guessing Game: What’s the single most useful widget in my shoulder bag?

Ever the road warrior I carry a lot of stuff in my laptop bag. There’s usually my company issued laptop, it’s power supply, a portable hard drive, some USB memory sticks. All the usual stuff.

What do you think would be the single most useful item that lives there all the time?

Goes ahead give it a guess.

I’d have to say that it’s this little USB cable. Yes, it’s a six inch long USB-to-micro-USB cable. It gets used in a variety of ways, most typically to charge my cell phone or bluetooth headset from a computer’s USB port. If I have a rental car it may get used there also.

In my suitcase I carry a couple of similar but longer cables. However, the little 6 Inch Micro USB cable is actually the most useful. I think the one that I carry actually came as an accessory to the Plantronics Voyager Pro UC, the bluetooth headset that my dog ate a few months ago.

Since I tend to use my cell phone as a wifi hotspot for my laptop the pair often spend an entire evening tethered. There’s a certain symbiosis to that relationship. The laptop provides the power that keep the cell phone running, and the cell phone provides the connectivity that makes the laptop relevant.

What’s the most useful little widget that you carry around as a matter of routine?